Napoleon III wasn’t entirely the hapless screw-up it’s tempting to turn him into.  After the absurd theater of his first, fantastically unsuccessful attempts to stage a coup, through the Mexican debacle and the ultimate defeat at the hands of Bismarck and von Moltke, there’s a bunch of just silly goings-on, but there’s more to the fellow than the punchlines, even if it seems we’re starting to go too far in the opposite direction to make up for years of intemperate guffawing.  Anyway, my favorite Nap3 book is the old one by Archibald Forbes, but one of these days I have firm, definite, even reaching the level of flimsy, plans to read the Bresler one sitting just over there.  Not, not there.  There.  That one.  Some day.  – DvL